1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data set analysis and more particularly to report generation in data set analysis.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data storage and analysis has remained a core competency of industrial computing for many decades. Data storage refers to the collection of data and the storage thereof in a data store such as a database. Data analysis, in turn, refers to the reduction of data according to interrelationships between the data, filtered commonalties amongst the data, and conclusions able to be drawn based upon either or both of the interrelationships and filtered commonalties. The most common manner in which to present the results of data analysis is within a report, whether printed or merely electronically displayed in a display of a computing terminal.
When performing data analysis upon large data sets such as a “core file”, some operations are known to consume less memory and processing resources than others that are deemed resource expensive. Conversely, the same resource expensive operations performed during data analysis upon a small data set may not be so costly. Notwithstanding, when designing a report for an end user one often prefers to consolidate the results of both cheap and expensive data analyses within a a single display. Consequently, the consolidated display can be only be displayed when the most expensive operation has completed. To the extent that the display is a Web page returned over a computer communications network for rendering in a content browser, the Web page itself cannot be generated and transmitted until the last data element has been provided, irrespective of the expense in acquiring the last data element. Notwithstanding, at the time the report is requested by the end user, the end user lacks a priori knowledge as to the likelihood that necessity to incorporate “expensive” data within the report and thus lacks an awareness as to how long a delay is expected to receive the requested report.
There are number of solutions to this problem. In one solution, the report is split between a portion including inexpensively acquired data elements and a portion including the expensive data elements. The first portion can be delivered post haste while the second portion can be delayed in delivery. Notwithstanding, the end user still must wait for an unknown amount of time whilst the expensive data is acquired. In a second solution, the data analysis can be performed prior to the end user requesting a report. However, to do so still consumes substantial processing resources of the data processing system without certainty that an end user seeks this report. Thus, the second solution can on occasion be wasteful.